Fast Work: In-Car, Dash-Mounted iPad

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Fast Work: In-Car, Dash-Mounted iPad

In a small car-audio shop down in Santa Clarita, California this week, something happened that has never happened before. Doug Bernards, son of "The SoundMan" Bruce Bernards, took his Dremel to the dash of a Toyota Tacoma pickup and began to cut. The project: The World's first in-car iPad.

The picture shows the result of placing the iPad at the heart of the car's entertainment system. Doug, of SoundMan Car Audio, has already cut an iPad-shaped hole, but is waiting on the Apple dock in order to hook it up to the rest of the system. And what a system. The dock connector will run direct to an Onkyo ND-S1 digital media transport, designed to get sound out of an iPod or iPhone with better quality than you get from the jack. This runs to an Audison Bit One processor which turns the digital signal into an analog signal and pipes it into a six-channel McIntosh amp.

What does all that mean? A kick-ass sound system is what it means, but we're more interested in the possibilities of a dash-mounted iPad. Clearly it will make an amazing GPS, and a dangerously distracting movie display, but there's something we're missing here. A big screen mounted up front in a car: Any ideas?